Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We stopped for the night in Saint-Hyacinthe, just east of Montreal. It would leave us just shy of 11 hours of driving left for the next day. We got settled into the hotel around 1030, successfully transferring all three sleeping children (no small feat) and got some rest before our final leg. Or so we thought.

At 4am I woke up to an incessant but not overly loud beeping noise. I woke Jacob to see what he thought it was, got very little response but decided to poke my head out the door to see if it was something that we should be concerned about. I opened the door to find the hallway full of smoke. Cue worst nightmare. I woke Jacob, all the way up this time, gathered up the three kids, grabbed the passports, soaked towels for the kids and we headed out. We were safe in the car before the fire trucks showed up.

We found out about an hour later that there was no real fire but instead someone had set off the fire extinguishing system which is what caused all the smoke. It was going to be at least another hour before they could let us back in. We gave them our address and asked them to ship our suitcase to us, grabbed some breakfast and hit the road.

About 45km away we remembered that Jacob had also left his backpack with our newly replaced computer, chargers and all other electronic items in the room. We turned around and headed back. I snuck in the side door and ran up to the room, quickly packed up our suitcase, the playpen and grabbed the backpack

Lucky for us though, we have the best traveling children ever. We managed to drive almost 1200 km in just over 12 hours with only two quick stops. There weren’t even any meltdowns, tears and only minor whining.